# How can we help?

## Overview

The Cordial Edge Category Affinity model leverages a contact's browse, add to wishlist, and purchase history to predict up to ten product categories they'll be interested in. You can then shape dynamic messaging according to people's predicted interests and tastes to optimize engagement, retention, cross-selling opportunities, and much more.

Category Affinity is available in the [Audience Builder](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005532168) and [Contact Profile](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057876832).

Contact your CSM to enable Category Affinity in your account.

## The Cordial difference

While our competitors offer basic affinity tools to identify what categories people prefer, the Cordial Edge Category Affinity model goes further to predict **up to ten additional categories** that will interest a contact based on their browse, add to wishlist, and purchase history.

- **The competition:** Looks at purchase history to identify which categories people prefer but doesn't offer predictions on likely categories of interest.
- **Cordial Edge AI:** A contact buys a shirt and, according to our Category Affinity tool, will likely also be interested in pants, socks, belts, jewelry, and multiple other product categories. You can create dynamic messaging based on those predicted interests.

> **Example use cases**  
> - Suggest items in categories surfaced by Category Affinity, unlocking new marketing opportunities across your product catalog.  
> - Use Category Affinity to identify contacts with a likely interest in a specific category and message them about upcoming sales and new releases.  
> - Deliver dynamic content across channels that changes based on a contact's real-time interests and affinities.

## Use Category Affinity

Category Affinity is an array of strings: `crdl_ai_category_affinity`

- Once enabled in your account, you can [use it to build audiences in the Audience Builder](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/26873758629645-Category-Affinity#h_01HZ53FYTD4NH785RXGRPCHGWC).
- You can also [view Category Affinity in each contact's Contact Profile](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/26873758629645-Category-Affinity#h_01HZSWHCE5MMT51P8TF0Q9VGJ7).

Recent browse, add to wishlist, and/or purchase history data is required for Category Affinity to function. Category Affinity data is refreshed on a weekly basis via Data Job.

## Build an audience with Category Affinity

1. Navigate to **Contacts > Audiences** and select **New** or edit an existing audience.
2. Under rules, type in **Cordial AI Category Affinity** or locate it under **Attributes**.

3. Click on **Cordial AI Category Affinity** or drag it into the **Include Contacts** section.
4. Enter the desired category affinity to load applicable contacts.
5. Click the **Actions** button and select **Save**.

6. Once your audience is saved, you can select it when creating or editing messages across channels.

## Example Category Affinity audiences

### Active contacts with specific affinity

The following example shows contacts who've been identified as having an affinity for the pants category and who've also made a purchase in the past 30 days. You could message these active contacts about new styles and upcoming sales.

### Affinity audience with cart activity

This example shows an audience with an affinity for shirts who haven't made any purchases in the past 30 days—but who have placed an item in their cart from this category. You could use a similar strategy to target likely buyers.

### Category Affinity + Purchase Propensity

This example combines Category Affinity with Purchase Propensity to find people with an affinity for summer items and who have a propensity score above 60%. You could use a similar approach to unlock numerous segmentation possibilities.

- [Learn more about the Purchase Propensity AI tool here](https://support.cordial.com/hc/en-us/articles/27013532311565).

## View a contact's Category Affinity

1. To view Category Affinity for an individual contact, navigate to **Contacts > Contact Profile** and select the contact.
2. Click the **Attributes** tab and locate the Cordial AI Category Affinity attribute.